Danish farmhouse ale

Danish farmhouse brewing appears to be almost entirely dead today,
but it was once thriving all over Denmark, and it died fairly
recently. Apart from one very brief summary hidden in a Danish dialect
dictionary I don't know of any attempt at a comprehensive description
of this brewing culture. So when I discovered that extensive
ethnographic surveys of Danish farmhouse brewing existed in two places
in Copenhagen I spent three days photographing 126 separate responses
in order to get a picture of Danish farmhouse ale.

126 responses is actually a lot of data, so I haven't yet
had time to go through all of them, but I've analyzed 21 in detail.
The most startling thing is how similar they are. I found 3 different
processes, where one dominates totally (17 responses), and another is
only very slightly different (2 responses). This is in total contrast
to the data from Norway, where everything differs wildly from response
to response.

Survey responses (just a fraction), National Museum, Copenhagen

Of course, this is easily explained. In Norway, people live in deep
valleys between high mountain plateaus, or in between huge forests.
Internal communications were quite difficult, and in places downright
dangerous. Denmark, on the other hand, is flat as a board and very
densely populated. One could easily walk from village to village. This
is obviously going to produce a more homogenous beer culture.

Another clear difference is that in Denmark it was much more common
to buy the malts and the hops. Again, the geography is a large part of
the reason. A local maltery could serve a much larger population in
Denmark, and thus be more profitable. Similarly, transporting hops
around in Denmark was vastly easier than in Norway. One thing that
stands out in the material is how many people would buy hops from
itinerant hop merchants from Funen. These would drop by at roughly the
same time every year, allowing people to stock up at a predictable
time.

Everyone, however, appears to have had their own yeast, in exactly
the same manner as Norwegian kveik. Many
different methods were used for preserving the yeast: yeast rings
(just like in Norway), drying on a brick, drying on a straw ring, or
keeping it in a pot. Pitch temperatures appear to have been in the
25-37 C range. Unfortunately, all of these yeast strains now seem to
have died.

The Danish brewing process

I've outlined the brewing process in the diagram above. Basically,
it's the most straightforward raw ale process,
where one starts with a simple infusion mash. Then, the mash is moved
to the strainer, and run off directly into the fermenter. Hops are
boiled in water on the side, to make hop tea, which is then added to
the fermenter. Cool the wort, then pitch the yeast.

The Danish strainer, drawing by Jens C. Andersen, Gylling
(from the collection at the University of Copenhagen)

The term "strainer" needs some explanation. It's really a lautering
tun, but farmhouse lautering tuns are different from the commercial
ones, so I've chosen to adopt Odd Nordland's term for it. In Denmark
it seems to near-invariably be shaped as in the drawing above. It's a
deep wooden vessel, placed on a kind of stool. In the bottom of the
vessel, off to one side, is a hole, closed by sticking a rod into it.
Lifting the rod allows the wort to run off into the bucket below the
stool. The filter in the strainer is straw in Denmark, usually tied in
a ring around the rod, sometimes weighted down with stones. Usually
there is more straw loosely piled on the bottom and the ring.

Even though this was raw ale many people write that in March/April
people would brew a beer called "gammelt-øl" (literally "old beer"),
which was stored until autumn. This was brewed the same way as the
ordinary beer, but stronger, and with more hops. So this is a raw ale
that was intended to be stored for six months. Clearly it is possible
to brew raw ale that lasts at least that long.

In large parts of Norway people would brew only a few times a year,
because they didn't have enough grain to brew more often. In Denmark
this doesn't appear to have been a concern at all, so people would
brew once a month, or every three weeks, or when the beer ran out. As
far as I can tell, only barley was used. This is probably because
people didn't have problems growing barley the way
people did in Norway.

It seems that one of the uses for the beer was to serve it to
servants, probably as part of their pay. One respondent writes that
"it was said about some rather stingy people that they always had sour
beer, because then their servants wouldn't drink so much."

One striking thing is the near-total absence of juniper. Juniper
was used in nearly all farmhouse ales in Norway, and it was widely
used in at least parts of Sweden. In Denmark the only place they
mention juniper is Bornholm, which is so far east it's actually closer
to Sweden than to Denmark proper. So probably that's due to influence
from Sweden.

It's clear from the responses that in the 19th century people
brewed all over Denmark, except the island of
Anholt.
The reason is probably that the soil on Anholt doesn't allow
agriculture, so there was no grain to brew from. The respondent writes
that people might brew for weddings, but if so they would buy the
malts on the mainland.

So what happened to all this brewing? That's difficult to say. Most
places it had died out already at the time the responses were written.
Per Kølster found an old woman on
northern Funen who was still brewing in 2005, so probably the
tradition is not yet entirely dead, but that's the only sign I've ever
seen of it still being alive anywhere.

One response, however, is quite striking. It's from Bredstrup, just
outside of Fredericia on Jutland. The response is written in 1971, and
the respondent writes that lots of people are brewing, even young
people. The young people make it a point of honour to brew better beer
than others. The local yeast was still alive, too. That's over forty
years ago, however, so who knows what's happened since. I've tried
contacting local home brewers to see if I can learn more.

There is a lot more information in the responses, but I
think this is enough for one blog post. From what I've seen of the
responses so far there is enough information to write a small book on
Danish farmhouse ale. That will have to wait, though.

Below is a map of all the responses. Update: The red dots are for
AFD (University of Copenhagen) responses, blue for NEU (National
Museum), and the single black dot is the brewer Per Kølster visited.

In the Nordic countries there is a whole style of brewing that has
so far almost completely escaped the attention of beer enthusiasts,
although some tips of the iceberg are showing above the surface here
and there, if you look carefully

Was there any indication how long the hop tea was boiled for, or the amount of water to hops etc? I'm assuming there were not timed hop additions to the hop tea.

Lars Marius - 2015-09-11 02:24:28

@Matt: In general people haven't described the boiling of the hop tea very much, but the impression I get is that they would use 2-3 liters of water, and boil for about an hour. I'd need to analyze this more carefully to say anything more. Note that batch sizes seem to typically have been around 150 liters.

Chris - 2016-01-22 08:17:46

It's a shame that you haven't found the same kind of active farmhouse brewing as you did in Norway. Based on your research, have you tried to recreate any Danish beer?

Lars Marius - 2016-01-22 08:23:16

@Chris: I've found a few indications that it might still be alive in northern Funen, but I haven't followed those up yet. I've yet to attempt to recreate the beer, since I haven't found any modern versions to copy. But it's definitely worth trying.

Have you seen this video, detailing the brewing process? There's nothing new or revolutionary in it, but at least it shows the tradition being alive (or, at least remembered) eight years ago. It's from Otterup on northern Funen. Let me know if you need something translated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hku8dguRnTY

Lars Marius Garshol - 2016-06-29 15:52:25

@Ulf: No, I hadn't seen this one. Thank you! This is great stuff! I'm going to Denmark next week, and will make sure to get in touch with the local history society in Otterup.